United States Department of Defense

Iran strikes AWS data centers in Middle East; Claude/Palantir MSS used in U.S.-Iran war targeting

Iranian drone strikes damaged at least three AWS data centers in Bahrain and the UAE in early March 2026, disrupting cloud services across the region and threatening billions in Gulf AI infrastructure investment. The attacks coincided with revelations that Anthropic's Claude, integrated with Palantir's Maven Smart System, was used to accelerate U.S. military targeting in Iran — reportedly compressing a 12-hour targeting process to under one minute and helping select over 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of operations. A subsequent investigation found U.S. forces likely struck a school killing 170+ people, with stale target data potentially a contributing factor. The episode marks a significant escalation in AI-enabled warfare and the first known targeting of commercial cloud infrastructure during active conflict.